Right, definitely not fail-safe and you probably need some measure of luck to start out with the right dispositions (though my starting out a RationalWiki-esque leftist and ending up a pseudo-reactionary is evidence that at least sometimes it’s not super important), but the most obvious alternative is just getting stuck being boring doing boring things.
That said, I generally have had ridiculous amounts of sheer luck—no, general positive outlook and so on really does not explain it, trust me—and so I generally don’t know what’s safe to recommend. Vladimir_M’s told a story about how listening to the advice of someone high status ended up hurting him a lot, and what he did sounds sorta similar to what I’m recommending, so major disclaimers apply.
Right, definitely not fail-safe and you probably need some measure of luck to start out with the right dispositions (though my starting out a RationalWiki-esque leftist and ending up a pseudo-reactionary is evidence that at least sometimes it’s not super important), but the most obvious alternative is just getting stuck being boring doing boring things.
That said, I generally have had ridiculous amounts of sheer luck—no, general positive outlook and so on really does not explain it, trust me—and so I generally don’t know what’s safe to recommend. Vladimir_M’s told a story about how listening to the advice of someone high status ended up hurting him a lot, and what he did sounds sorta similar to what I’m recommending, so major disclaimers apply.